December 29, 2009

Vietnam’s businesses do not trust domestic technology

A director of a big construction company in Hanoi always refuses to go to workshops or technology exhibitions. If he has to go to the workshops for some reasons, he always leaves early because he does not have faith in Vietnamese technology.

The director related that he once ordered Vietnamese scientists to manufacture equipment advertised as “modern technology” with prices just equal to half that of foreign technologies. However, he never got what he wanted and he has turned to foreign technologies.

A director of an informatics service company related that in 2008, she spent money on corporate management software developed by a domestic company. It took three years to complete the product. “The quality was far different from advertised,” she complained. “We always had troubles with the software and we had to purchase foreign technology instead.”

At the HCM City People’s Council’s meeting in early December 2009, Director of the HCM City Science and Technology Department Phan Minh Tan said that the recent survey conducted on 430 HCM City businesses showed that only one percent have modern technologies, 51 percent have low technologies and only 13 percent have above average technologies. Meanwhile, works by Vietnamese scientists have been left unused, which is considered a big waste.

An expert said that every year, the state budgets 750 billion dong for science and technology research, but it has not brought the desired effect. Scientists are just doing research, but they do not care if the works can be applied. A lot of scientific research works carried out with the state’s money cannot be commercialized.

Dr Tran Quoc Thang, former Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, observed that scientists and businesses still cannot attain a meeting of the minds and thus businesses still do not trust in scientists.

Dr Nguyen Phuong Tung, a scientist from the Institute of Applied Materials Science, said that she once moved heaven and earth to collect 30 signatures for the disbursement of a technology transfer contract to a company in Vung Tau City.

When Tung was trying to collect the 21st signature, a leader said that he was not interested. And with the statement, everything was stopped. Tung said that the complicated procedures clip the wings of scientists, making their research works distant frombusinesses.